I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here

Now that the planes are flying and the Royal Navy is on the seas, it's time for a bit of fun... Everyone gets a perverse enjoyment out of seeing the rich and pampered reduced to travelling steerage and the air shut down was a great leveler. Reading about celebrities being forced to give up the private jets and share the travel misery that most of us take for granted if they wanted to make their gigs has been the source of a few laughs over the past week.

Whitney Houston, already getting baaaad reviews for her performance ( Houston, we have a problem) had to take the car ferry from Birmingham to Dublin and back in order to make it to her concerts. Did she have to fight for a seat in steerage? Or did her assistants do it for her? Image from Yahoo.newsJohn Cleese, of Monty Python, was the first to make the news; taking a series of 3 taxis from Oslo to Brussels for a mere £3,300 and then he got the last seat on the Eurostar to London.

Jeffrey Archer was marooned on Majorca, sans wife and children on his birthday. "It was just me sitting in my office with my manuscript," he said. "I didn't even get any presents."

Gary Lineker, former footballer and t.v. presenter, drove himself and his family over night from Madrid to Paris in order to present Match of the Day on Saturday.

Paul McCartney stayed in New York with his daughter while his ex-wife, Heather Mills, was stuck in Austria after a ski trip. According to the Telegraph, Jesus Cruz, Madonna's ex, has posted forlorn pictures of himself, sitting surrounded by other people's luggage, waiting for a plane to take him home to Brazil from Barcelona.

Image from Daily MailEven the footballers have had to rough it, taking buses and trains to make it to their matches. The Liverpool football team is under strict orders to make it to theirs, or else. So the millionaire footballers took the Eurostar to Paris, first class of course, then a train to Bordeaux and a short flight to Madrid. Their manager said it would be a good bonding experience for them.

Fulham players thought they were going to go to Hamburg by private jet, but the volcano stops for no one so they reverted to plan B. That is: a bus to Folkestone yesterday morning, where they caught the Eurotunnel to Calais before driving to Hamburg on the same coach. The 600-mile journey took between ten and 12 hours to complete.

In a lovely spirit of generosity, in New York, the producers of the play "The 39 Steps" gave anyone showing an Icelandic passport two free tickets to the show. They said "Don't spend one more evening on a cot at JFK (airport)."